And once again, after vowing not to, I have dropped the ball. For the most part I have been writing, though not as much as I vowed to in my last post, and I have not completed my script yet. This last month has been hectic. At work I did my very first ever real life server upgrade. It took way more of my energy than I anticipated. I spent my days looking up info, gathering the information I needed, ordering hardware and prepping my coworkers for the jolting change. I spent my evenings reading up on Windows Server 2012, how to install and manage it, and making list after list to make sure I planned for every contingency. That left very little time or energy for writing or doing anything else, really. Now that it is done, I can breathe a little better and relax a little more.

So now I am prepping to perform at OryCon with a filk group. I am really excited about this. It is going to be fun. And it has had an unintended consequence. When talking to the concom about our group, our illustrious leader was asked "Is that THE Eleanor Stokes, the animator?" I must admit I squeed a bit when he told me that. Another admission - I didn't think anyone really knew who I was. Well, beyond friends and family. It also shocks me because I am not the first Eleanor Stokes that comes up when you Google me. There is a romance author with my name. She is published and so usually comes up first. In fact, a date from OK Cupid renegged on their offer after Googling me and finding her. But I guess I did get minor coverage on i09 (though they posted someone else's video with my name) and some promotion from the Towel Day site for the winning video I did last year. (If you don't know what I am talking about, you must have just stumbled on this blog, as for most of last year it was all I posted about.)

So now I am excited, and feel the need to do another animation. Need to square away more of real life first, but I definitely feel the itch. I have for a while, I have just not had the energy. Now that work has settled down somewhat I can clean up my space and do some animating. And writing. And Stuff. :)

I have been contemplating my camera problem. Seriously, using an unreliable point n shoot that runs out of battery quickly has to be the least efficient way to make a stop mo. Due to the Canon point n shoots not allowing remote triggering or triggering from a computer, stabilization has been a bitch. Just when I think i have it I look back and see all my videos jumping around. They aren't shakey cam, but they aren't as smooth as I like. I also have problems with consistent color and focus, as it likes to auto focus even when that feature is turned off.

So what? Well, I have been thinking. I won the Douglas Adams animation contest sponsored by the Literary Platform. First prize is the new iPad. I have been researching it online, and it looks like the new iPad has a great camera on it. I don't know how much control it has, but the pictures would be better quality than what I get with the point n shoot. It might be easier to stabilize as well. The aperture also goes to f 2.4, where my point n shoot only gets f2.6. And as far as control goes, I wonder if there is an app that would give me that control? Everything I am reading about it touts it's auto features - autofocus, auto face recognition (which totally messes up a shot by focusing on what I don't want to focus on), auto white balance, auto exposure (which is a bitch when I want to overexpose for effect), and autofocus lock. I guess it may be too much to expect SLR control with a cheap built-in device. Most of the time they make those things to be idiot proof. Meaning you don't have to know how to take pictures to get good pictures. Still, I am excited about playing around with it to see what I can get. As I haven't had a working Mac in years, I am excited to check out the app store and see what is available to help me override auto-itis. I wonder if I can get remote trigger as well for it. Hmm....

It may be a week or so before I get the iPad, so I have time to plan and write and build to be ready for it.

Also, I hope it comes in black.